The Inoculation -- Vaccine Misinformation and Society

How Malta Beat Vaccine Disinformation and Hesitancy to Become a COVID-19 Overachiever

The tiny island of Malta is an overachiever in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Politico. Before the end of August, the Maltese government announced that 90% of the population over 12 years of age is fully vaccinated. This meant that the first phase of the vaccination programme was largely complete before rolling out boosters to vulnerable populations from mid-September.

But it’s not enough to say that vaccinating the population was easy because Malta is so small. Data from Eurobarometer surveys and the WHO show that vaccine hesitancy was not that uncommon before the pandemic. In the Eurobarometer survey, over a third said they believed in the conspiracy that viruses were produced in government labs in order to control the population - that’s above the EU average. So how did Malta manage such a successful vaccination campaign?

To find out, Daiva talked to public health and infodemic expert Prof. Neville Calleja and the vaccination programme’s coordinator Steve Agius. In this episode, Eva and Daiva discuss what they learned.

Our reporting is supported by IJ4EU and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to our newsletter, and this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

Who Believes Misinformation? Are Liberals More Susceptible?

Researching the benefits of situations where people come together to solve puzzles or make decisions, Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg realised that there is a dark side of collective intelligence. This led her to research fake news. When her team showed simulated social media posts, accurate or not, to a sample of Americans, it emerged that liberals more than conservatives judge information as reliable, even when it isn’t, when it comes from a source they trust. So The Inoculation team contacted Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg to find out more. You can read her and Sander van der Linden’s paper here. The tweet mentioned by Eva is here.

Our reporting is supported by IJ4EU and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to our newsletter, and this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

How Anti-Vaccination Movements Make Money and Serve Hostile Actors

After a wave of protests against vaccines and vaccine mandates in Europe, it is clear that despite very different policies across Europe, anti-vaccination movements that oppose them are remarkably alike. These movements are tightly linked, even though some of their connections are hidden. They amplify one another, and they have  elaborate ways to support their activities financially - from selling books on Amazon to offering legal services to anyone who feels they have been harmed by vaccination.

We had discussed this with disinformation researcher Dr Aliaksandr Herasimenka, so we thought we will come back to this interview and highlight his insights that explain the mobilisation around vaccines these days. A researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project of the Oxford Internet Institute, Herasimenka is a co-author of a paper on misinformation distribution on Telegram.

The interview was edited for brevity and clarity. You can read the Alliance for Securing Democracy's research on China's propaganda and search engines here. We ran such a search ourselves, and the clips in the beginning of the episode are from the results we got.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to our newsletter, and this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

The Inoculation’s September Round-Up:Vaccine Mandates, Idar Oberstein Mask-Murder And More

A number of relevant articles, studies and data has recently come out, so Eva and Daiva review suggested readings for The Inoculation’s September round-up.

You can read these sources here:

• “Vaccine Passports” May Backfire: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study in the UK and Israel on Willingness to Get Vaccinated against COVID-19;
• The story of the German gas station shooting: Der Tagesspiegel, Der Spiegel;
• Covid denialists and far-right movements;
• AfD, German elections and Facebook;
• Facebook’s international impact, and more;
• NDI’s playbook: Combating Information Manipulation;
• The Johns Hopkins Center’s survey dashboard;
• Article by Tech Policy Press;
• The Economist’s op-ed on freedom and vaccine mandates
• WSJ podcasts about Facebook

And check out our episodes on vaccine mandates and disinformation in Slovakia.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

Mandatory vaccination: Can it backfire?

In our first episode after the summer break we discuss mandatory vaccination mandates - something we have been researching before the COVID-19 pandemic began. In late 2020, we talked to former European Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, who has a lot of experience with vaccine mandates. 

As a commissioner, Andriukaitis campaigned for vaccination measures around Europe. But before that, as Lithuania’s minister of health, he introduced vaccine requirements for children, following a measles outbreak in 2013. But when he left for the Commission, without strong backing from the top, the legislation became stuck in parliament and was eventually repealed. Another measles outbreak followed in 2019, and vaccination became an electoral issue in Lithuania. You can read more about Lithuania’s struggle with vaccine hesitancy in our article.

We also talk to Oxford Vaccine Group researcher Samantha Vanderslott, University of Exeter Professor Jason Reifler, and Italian pediatrician Lorenza Romani.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation.

Social Media, Russia, Disinformation -- GMFUS' Bret Shafer talks to The Inoculation

Summer special: 

Hi listeners. before we leave for our summer breaks, we are taking a look back at some of our most insightful conversations about disinformation and misinformation. This week’s conversation is with Bret Shafer, the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s media and digital disinformation fellow

Parts of the interview appeared in Episode 7. In this episode, Bret Shafer mentions misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. You can hear an explainer of the differences among them here.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation.

‘Superspreaders of Malign‘ -- Disinformation Expert Miriam Matthews Talks About Russian Information Manipulation

In this episode, we talked to Miriam Matthews author of a report published in April called Superspreaders of Malign and Subversive Information. It describes the types of COVID-19-related malign and subversive information efforts with which Russia- and China-associated outlets appear to have targeted U.S. audiences from January 2020 to July 2020. 

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

Disinformation in Spain, Heidi Larson, Social Media and EU Vaccine Hesitancy: The Inoculation’s Press Review

After listening to podcasts and reading numerous articles and reports on vaccine disinformation, Eva and Daiva have decided to share some of them. This is the first episode of The Inoculation's quarterly press roundup.

You can find episode 6 on Sputnik V here and episode 8 on vaccine geopolitics here. The story on vaccine mandates in Russia is here. In this episode, we refer to Heidi Larson's book and a profile on her, Coda Story's article on disinformation in Spain, First Draft's article on disinformation in West Africa, a Eurofound survey, and we listen to a new podcast. 

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

Russian Vaccine Disinformation and the Collapse of Slovakia's Government

An elaborate media network promotes Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine by undermining the others, currently approved by the European Union. But what happens when an EU country decides to buy the Sputnik vaccine? Does vaccine disinformation adapt? Slovakia has recently started injecting the Sputnik doses it bought in winter. Daiva and Eva try to figure out what happened with help from Slovak journalist Lukáš Onderčanin.

To learn more about disinformation, you can read the EUvsDisinfo’s report. To learn how Slovakia succeeded in containing the first wave but then infections went out of control in autumn, you can read articles on Foreign Policy and The Atlantic and listen to our earlier episode on how the health ministry was combating misinformation on social media. You can read more about Slovakia’s Sputnik V purchase here and about the domino effect in the region here.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation

On the Fence -- We talk to parents who are mulling vaccination

Across Europe, some countries are about to finish vaccinating the most vulnerable residents against COVID-19. It’s time to offer the jab to the general population -- and some are not only refusing vaccines, but also calling on others to shun them. Research shows that neither more fact-checks nor more experts will tilt the population’s attitudes towards vaccines.

In this collaborative episode between Are We Europe and The Inoculation, we look into how parents find their way with so much confusing information online, and what approach to vaccine hesitancy works.

You can read more about the politics of vaccination in Italy in Time magazine, Newsweek and Nature. You can find the study mentioned in the podcast here.

Our interpreter in this episode was Romina Spina. Our assistant producers were Andrei Popoviciu and Priyanka Shankar.

Our reporting is supported by Journalismfund.eu, Media Lab Bayern and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation. You can also follow Are We Europe on all these social networks or become a member at areweeurope.com/member.